Salvation at the Hands of an Artificial God
by Traitor of All Traitors
Summary: A scenario like no other. Two stories in the same universe. Shinji, a child soldier drafted into a nightmare by his father, suddenly relocated across time, space and reality, to a world ruled by monsters. A different past…and a different future. He must become a pillar of hope to people prepared to give up. Can he do…or will he fall alongside them? Finally complete!
1. Past

Creation began on 02-01-19

Creation ended on 02-07-19

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Salvation at the hands of an Artificial God: Past

A/N: After seeing all three _Godzilla_ anime films of Netflix, I got the idea to create this crossover that deals with Shinji getting involved in the situation of dealing with Godzilla Earth. If anything, this will be two separate stories interconnected by the same situation: One in the past, and the other in the future. Here goes.

As Haruo got separated from his parents and saw as Godzilla approached the airport to destroy the last vestiges of humanity, something fell out of the sky and crashed onto the runway. It crashed with enough force that the ground shook up to twenty kilometers.

"Look at that!" A man yelled as the people stopped running to see what had fallen.

"Is it a weapon?!" A woman cried. "Is it a bomb?!"

"No," Haruo uttered as he got a look out the window. "It's some sort of…robot."

-x-

"…Aah…urgh… What happened?" Shinji Ikari, the pilot of Evangelion Unit-01 and designated Third Child in accordance with the Marduk Institute, whatever that was, groaned as he came to, seeing the world around him through the Eva's optical video system, seeing a sky red like fire…and a creature unlike anything he'd ever seen before.

It was around fifty meters in height, obscured by the red sky, looking bulky and somewhat smooth and rocky in a sense, somewhat dinosaurian in appearance…and, despite it almost looking as though it were smiling in a sense, it made Shinji think otherwise of its nature because of his past encounter with other large creatures. The fact that it gave off a feeling of hostility as a world of destruction was behind every step it took as it came closer.

Shinji turned his head towards the buildings where there were these strange ships that looked as though they were to get away from the creature, and the Eva's optical system zoomed in on some people that were just watching the scene happening in front of them. They were all wearing identical suits, possibly meant for their survival, their faces locked in expressions of woe; they must've been so afraid of this creature that they were trying to flee from it before it could annihilate them.

_Where you are now doesn't matter, anymore, Shinji,_ he thought to himself as he checked the Eva's internal battery, seeing that, despite the impossibility of it, it had two-and-a-half minutes of power left. _You're here now, and you have to do something, anything, because you know that if you don't, the people around you will suffer._

Making the Eva rise up to its feet, he stood and faced the monster that posed a threat to the human race.

"I will not run away," he uttered. "I will not turn my back on them."

-x-

"That robot… It's facing Godzilla!" A woman yelled as Haruo looked at the robot taking something out of one of its shoulders, resembling some sort of knife.

"Is it…here to protect us from Godzilla?" He wondered, and watched as the robot ran towards the monster, its speed making it seem like it didn't obey all of the laws of physics regarding power and weight.

-x-

Armed with only the Progressive Knife, Shinji knew that it was better than nothing, and swung the vibrating blade across the beast's chest, feeling as though he were cutting into…a tree.

"What the… What is this thing?!" He questioned, not seeing any blood spill from the chest.

Did this thing not bleed? Did it not possess any blood? But what was noticed was how the creature was slow to react, but showed signs of being injured. There was a long, cut-like gash on its chest, looking like a hole in a mountainside.

"If you can be hurt," he realized, turning the knife over, "then you can probably die."

However, bluish lights began to flare up around the creature's body as electrical sparks or glitter formed a circle around its head and condensed in front of it. Suddenly, it was unleashed in the form of a thin, blue beam.

Shinji reacted by spreading the Eva's AT-Field, feeling the Eva get pushed backwards by eight feet, like it was brushing up against a wall that was hot.

"Aaaah!" He yelled, and realized that he was at least three feet away from crashing into the building behind him, seeing the frightened people cowering in fear. "No!"

-x-

Godzilla didn't know what this being was, but couldn't let it stop it from eliminating the last of its enemy from the world it would rule on. Firing its atomic breath, it failed to inflict any degree of harm upon the new threat. There was some sort of force field in front of it, protecting it from harm.

Suddenly, it started to glow the color of its atomic breath, the energy it unleashed to attack it encircling its body.

Something was up.

-x-

Shinji couldn't explain it, but somehow, the energy attack the Eva was hit with had reenergized the internal battery back to full power. He'd been told that the Eva was able to deal with a nuclear explosion and fallout by Misato, but he didn't expect to actually have to go through with it, assuming that she was just trying to assure him that everything was going to be fine with the Jet Alone incident. But now, here he was, and the only thing between him and suffering life-threatening changes at the midst of extreme radiation…was the Eva itself.

_It looks like this creature is like an actual animal,_ he thought, raising the knife up to the height of the Eva's neck. _If I take off its head, it should be enough to kill it._

The smile this creature gave might've been unintentional, but Shinji would give it a reason to frown at him.

"Ten…nine…eight…seven," he started counting, the Eva running towards the monster, intent on decapitating it. "…Five…four…three…two…one…"

SLASH! The knife clashed with the head and something else, and time seemed to stand still.

The Eva fell to its palms and knees, its knife wedged in the ground.

THUD! A body fell to the ground loudly.

-x-

"…How long do you suspect he'll be unconscious?"

"…Hard to say for certain… The radiation was cleared up by the ANEB, but we want to keep him for a few days to make sure he doesn't develop any symptoms."

"…Witnesses will want to know everything they can about him… That robot…"

"…Bilusaludos want to study it, but the UN state they can't unless they get consent from him…"

There were so many voices, but they were just noise to Shinji as he drifted in and out of consciousness every few minutes before he fell into darkness.

"Please, wake up soon, sir," he thought he heard a little boy's voice.

"Gah!" He awoke with a gasp, finding himself in a large, sparse room, the scent of an incense candle filling the place up with a sweet smell, and a small window opened to let in a draft.

Shinji looked around with his eyes, seeing that he was dressed in white garments and in front of the medical bed were small jars of flowers.

"Ah, you're finally awake," he heard someone say to him as he turned to the right side of the room, seeing a female nurse. "How do you feel?"

"I…I don't know," he responded. "How long was I asleep?"

"Almost three weeks. That's to be expected, though; you were found a few feet away from Godzilla when they brought you here."

"God…Godzilla?"

"You might be experiencing some memory loss. What do you remember?"

"I was…falling into darkness…and I awoke where I ended up…and there was that strange monster that looked like some sort of dinosaur."

"That was Godzilla. It was a monster unlike anything we've ever seen…and hope never to see again. Do you remember…facing it?"

"Yes, I do. Did I…defeat it?"

"Better than defeat it, young man. If you were going for its head, you took it and its arms off. It was supposed to be able to regenerate from its injuries, but after losing its head, it just fell over. The Bilusaludos quickly exposed it to high amounts of ANEB to eat away at its radioactivity. Some people are guessing that it can't regenerate from severe head trauma."

"Nobody can survive losing their head."

"We don't know who are yet…and already, you're a celebrity."

"What?"

"They're calling you names like, the _'Man Who Killed Godzilla'_, _'Godzilla Slayer'_, the _'Keeper of the Giant'_, and so on."

He killed a monster nobody else had been able to kill, and Shinji would learn that they've been trying to kill it for over a decade, that it appeared in Twenty-Thirty, and for this one act of selflessness, the people were calling him a hero.

"My name…is Shinji Ikari," he told the nurse.

"Shinji Ikari…it is nice to meet you."

-x-

His story was unbelievable…but the media ate it up like how the Anti-Nuclear Energy Bacteria ate up the radiation emitted from Godzilla's remains. The world knew what they could about Shinji Ikari, the fourteen-year-old boy from another universe where the year was Twenty-Fifteen and he had been drafted into a war by his father to face an enemy he knew nothing about that were codenamed "Angels". The robot he piloted was a synthetic, bio-mechanical organism designed to fight these Angels, and the last one it ever faced was what led him to this world…where he saved them from having to abandon the planet.

-x-

"What is the update on the Godzilla remains?" Halu-elu Dolu-do of the Bilusaludos asked Mulu-elu Galu-gu as they looked at the decaying remains of the monster itself.

"Its cells are still active, but its radiation's reduced dramatically," the latter answered the former. "It shows zero signs of regeneration."

"Without its head, without light and water, it can't return to life and continue its reign of terror on this planet."

"We did, however, learn some interesting details going further into its biology. At first, it was believed that Godzilla was some sort or mutated dinosaurian aberration, but it's not. It's a hyper-evolved plant organism."

"Essentially, it is a walking tree that looks like an abomination."

"That's right. While its cells are still decaying and the ANEB is still eating away at its radiation, we should be able to decipher every last bit of genetic information this creature has…and develop new methods of countering it should we ever face another one in the future."

"Excellent, Mulu-elu Galu-gu, this is an impressive update."

-x-

_Five years later_

Five years of silence, five years of reclamation, and five years of peace. Ever since the defeat of Godzilla at the hands of Shinji Ikari and his Evangelion, there hadn't been another attack by any new monsters in the following months. There were sightings, but these were lesser, less-hostile creatures, such as another Anguirus, Mothra and another Baragon, and they weren't a threat, just passing by the reclaimed countryside of wherever they went.

In truth, Godzilla was the only real danger that had ever existed, and it was hoped that it would never return.

"Are you sure he lives here?" Yuko Tani asked Haruo as they stopped by a small house in the countryside of Hokkaido.

"Yes, I'm sure," Haruo answered her. "This is where he wanted to be after all those interviews and the deal he made with the UN regarding the Eva being used as a defense against any future attacks from giant monsters."

Because the study of alternate dimensions was impossible and he was alone in an unfamiliar future, Shinji, desiring only a life of peace now that he no longer had to fight the Angels or anything related to NERV, requested only to walk away from violence and find his place in this new world. One of the good things about his new predicament was that the UN felt that, being he was the one to defeat a monster none of them or their alien allies could, he should be rewarded for his untimely service to the world, and was paid enough to last him a lifetime. Of course, even with money, all Shinji would've minded more than anything else was a simple job as a chef.

There was nothing currently available for him in the culinary field, so he was stuck for the time being doing the next best thing: Teaching young people how to cook at his house, provided there were those that wanted to learn about miso soup and teriyaki.

This is what brought Haruo and Yuko here in the first place…and because Haruo wanted to see the young man that saved the lives of his parents when he defeated Godzilla…just to say his thanks to him in person.

Ding-dong! Shinji, in his study, reading another cook book, heard the doorbell rang, and set it down as he got up from his desk.

"I wonder who that could be," he wondered as he walked towards the front door, passing a small picture taken almost a year ago of himself at the beach with a young girl his age, with reddish-black hair and brown eyes. _It couldn't be Mariko, she'd call me first._

Fin

A/N: Here it is. What did you think and what do you expect to see in the next chapter? Read and review. See ya!


	2. Future

Creation began on 02-07-19

Creation ended on 03-25-19

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Salvation at the Hands of an Artificial God: Future

When the real Godzilla emerged from beneath the mountain following the destruction of its lesser kin, Haruo and the others were stunned at the size of the monster that had driven them from the Earth.

"No way," Haruo expressed, unable to believe that the Godzilla that had claimed the planet was capable of growing to over three-hundred meters and was likely more powerful after twenty-thousand years.

"It's huge!" Yuko gasped.

"We gotta get away from here!" A woman yelled as everyone else started to retreat to the Landing Ships; there was no chance of defeating a creature that massive with what they had.

Godzilla turned to see the ships taking flight…and couldn't permit them to escape from him.

"Grrr," he growled at them, intending to unleash his wrath upon them with his Super Oscillatory Wave and Plasma Cutter attacks…until…

FLASH! An intense brightness illuminated the sky for a moment, distracting the super beast.

Ding! He felt something hit him from behind, but as he turned to look, there was nothing there.

"What was that?" Yuko asked Haruo as he got on a Hover Bike.

"Something fell out of the sky and hit Godzilla on its back, but Godzilla doesn't seem to notice," he explained, confused by this himself.

-x-

Disoriented from hunger and fatigue, Shinji Ikari awoke from what felt like a long slumber…and wondered what was going on outside the Eva.

Beep! He heard a beep go by and looked at his plugsuit's life-support display.

"This can't be right," he uttered. "It should've been down to a minute, but now it says everything's fine."

He then checked the Eva's internal battery, which should've rerouted all that it had to the life-support system to keep him alive for at least sixteen hours, but saw something different being displayed in front of him. The Eva's internal battery at the usual capacity showed three-five minutes whenever the umbilical cable was severed, but now it was showing an increase of time to almost forty-seven minutes…and was still climbing.

"What the…" He uttered, wondering what was happening with the Eva to suddenly have this much time to spare.

-x-

"What's going on here?" Haruo wondered aloud as everyone saw Godzilla's electromagnetic energy seemed to be acting up against its will.

"It must be whatever hit Godzilla in the back," Martin suspected. "It's either siphoning its energy or is causing it to go haywire."

Suddenly, Godzilla fired its beam, but it was out its back, up towards the sky.

"Grrrrrraaurgh!" Godzilla roared, sounding in distress. "Grrrraaurgh!"

Seconds later, another beam shot out of its back, followed by another…and another…and another. Now, its back was shooting out more than twenty beams of electromagnetic energy into the sky, forcing it to hunch over.

CRACK! A series of small cracks formed in its legs, leading up to its waist.

Then, the people all saw something slowly levitate into the air among the beams that were firing out of Godzilla's back. It looked like…some sort of humanoid with large shoulder.

"What is that?" Yuko asked.

"It's…some sort robot," expressed Adam Bindewald. "Oh, my God, look at that."

The beams that shot out of Godzilla's back had ceased, allowing them to get a better look at the being that had hit Godzilla. It was some sort of armored humanoid, with a predominantly-purple color scheme and a horn on its head, as if depicting some type of demon.

"The Devil," Haruo uttered; there was no other way to describe the being that was in the air.

-x-

"My, my," went Metphies as he saw Godzilla being attacked by the humanoid being that appeared to siphon off a large portion of Godzilla's power. "This is quite an unexpected turn of events for the almighty King of Destruction."

-x-

The numbers on the counter were in a constant state of flux, as though the internal battery had so much energy now that it couldn't be properly measured. Even as he tried to keep up with the flux, Shinji couldn't get past the fact that his Eva had somehow drawn power from this strange creature that appeared to be about to attack the people below.

"If it's attacking them, they need to be protected from it," he told himself, unconcerned with how he ended up wherever he currently was right now, and was wondering how he was going to deal with a creature that was much larger than his Eva if all it could do right now was recharge and extend its internal battery and levitate. "Eva, if there's something else new that you can do right now, I'd greatly appreciate it if you could do it to protect the people!"

-x-

Godzilla felt like he had regained control of his power and was about to swing his tail and crush these inferior pests under the rubble…but then…

"Tonight, we either live or die," a voice uttered. "Tonight, we either rise or fall. And in your case, you will rise. You will rise and ascend to the heavens."

Suddenly, the King of the Monsters felt himself being lifted off the ground.

"Grrrrraaurgh!" He roared as he was turned to face the being above himself.

-x-

On his screens, the name of the attack just popped up in front of him. It was called Gravity Ascension, and it was only because the Eva had siphoned a large degree of power from this creature that was some sort of aberration. This was what was enabling Shinji to manipulate the gravity around this creature, raising it from off the ground.

_I may not be able to harm you, but I may be able to dispose of you,_ Shinji thought, feeling a little strain in his body as the Eva ascended higher into the sky. _I will dispose of you._

Over them, it looked like the sky was turning dark, blanketed by starlight, indicating that they were breaking through the planet's atmosphere and entering space.

"Grrr!" He heard the creature growl as it started to glow bright blue and purple.

"God, have mercy upon me," Shinji prayed.

Godzilla fired his Atomic Breath at the Eva, but it deflected it back at him with some sort of wall of orange energy.

BLAST! Godzilla was struck in the chest by his own Atomic Breath, causing further cracks to form across his body.

"Aaaaauurgh!" He roared in agony.

-x-

"…What in the Hell is that thing with Godzilla?" Unberto Mori wondered, watching from the Aratrum along with everyone else present, disbelieving that Godzilla had grown to such a colossal height after a lengthy period of over ten-thousand years.

"It looks like…an oni," went Takashi Hamamoto in response; to him, this purple humanoid, whatever it was, resembled a horned demon. "It's the Devil himself."

"That's the Devil, you say?" Halu-elu Dolu-do questioned. "It looks more like it's cybernetic than organic, based upon its appearance."

Everyone aboard the Aratrum could see this humanoid looking as though it possessed some sort of telekinesis that was affecting Godzilla as it was being lifted into space.

"If it gets rid of Godzilla and it's the only monster left on the planet, we can go back to the Earth," a woman expressed.

"Yes, it's possible, but only if that thing, whatever it is, can dispose of Godzilla," a man agreed with her belief.

They saw the humanoid appear to have successfully extracted Godzilla from the planet's orbit and turn one-hundred-eighty degrees away from Earth, as though telekinetically sending the colossal aberration that had driven them away into the abyss.

-x-

_Fall into the abyss of space, _thought Shinji, feeling weakened due to the fact that he hadn't eaten in over sixteen hours…or as far as he could tell, _drift away, freeze up, get lost in an asteroid belt somewhere, crash onto Mars or wherever you end up now. Just never come back here. This isn't your world, anymore. It never was yours to begin with._

As he saw the monster slowly try to move towards the Eva, he tried to stay conscious in case it had some ability to propel itself forward in an attempt to get back to the Earth. This creature was no Angel, but it was just as dangerous and far too great a threat to permit back on the planet.

"Grr…" It growled, trying to reach out towards the Eva and the Earth, but the lack of gravity around it reduced any ability to move freely.

As it drifted further and further out into the darkness of space, barely bathed in the sun's light, it looked at the small humanoid that had ripped it from the blue sphere, as if marking it as an eternal foe. If by some random act of the universe itself that it came back, it would burn it away from existence and reclaim the world it was removed from.

-x-

With the understanding that Godzilla was a hyper-evolved species of plant with metallic fiber tissues integrated into its function, the adults on the Aratrum had to suspect that as Godzilla continued to drift off into space, the near-absolute zero temperatures all around it would reduce it into a frozen state in no time at all.

"Distance one-hundred-thirty meters," a man monitoring Godzilla's drifting uttered. "Distance one-hundred-fifty meters… Distance one-hundred-seventy meters…one-hundred-ninety meters… We're losing visual readings… Visual readings lost. We're unable to track Godzilla."

"We're not picking up any electromagnetic waves, even in the slightest," added a woman monitoring the scanners. "Godzilla must've been drifted far enough that it's in the solar system, but too far from us to be seen."

-x-

"…I can't believe it," went Haruo, as the remains of the Earth group regrouped and saw the humanoid slowly return. "It got rid of Godzilla."

"Yeah, it did," Yuko expressed, "but now we should know why."

"We don't have anything that could harm this demon if it should see us as a threat," said Martin to them.

"Wait a minute, everyone," said Adam, looking at a scanner, "we're picking up biometric telemetry from within the humanoid. I think there's a person inside it."

A collection of gasps and murmurs were heard, but it seemed like nobody wanted to believe that this giant humanoid was being controlled by a person just yet. Even as it finally landed on the ground, there was only conjecture without any proof.

Suddenly, the behemoth fell to its knees and hands as something…cylindrical jutted out of its back, expelling some sort of substance.

"Are you still getting biometric telemetry from it?" Haruo asked Adam.

"Yes," he answered, "and a faint heartbeat."

Adam then managed to get a scan of the cylindrical object and showed an internal scan of its interior and the occupant inside.

"Whoa," Yuko shuddered. "You were right. There is a person in there. Is he…dead?"

"No, he still has a pulse. He looks like he just passed out due to fatigue."

"Let's go get him," went Haruo to them; whoever this kid was, they just owed him a great debt for doing what they couldn't do, and the first step in taking back their planet in over twenty-thousand years since they had to evacuate."

-x-

Adrift in an asteroid belt, deprived of light and water to survive, Godzilla was motionless as he thought of the humanoid he was cast from the Earth by. Of all the arrogance of mankind, this behemoth had to be the most depraved example of how the species would lead to their own downfall. But it just appeared without any warning, sneaking up on him without him being aware of its presence until after it made itself known. But one day, he would find a way back to Earth, to reclaim his world and purge it of those that dared to oppose him, and the purple giant would be eradicated out of the malice he had for it.

Some time had passed before the light in Godzilla's eyes dimmed as he crashed into one of the asteroids in the belt. His final thoughts being of the Earth…and then…of nothing. It wasn't that he was dead now, but he had nothing more to think of or about as the silence around offered no measure of noise.

-x-

He heard a beeping sound as he struggled to open his eyes. There was some sort of pouch or sack of fluid hanging from a ceiling with a tube sticking into his right arm. With some renewed strength, Shinji rose up to see that he was inside a room that seemed…bare and not unlike a makeshift recovery room.

_Where…am I? _He wondered, just as a door opened, revealing a young girl dressed in some sort of black and white suit.

"You're finally awake," she spoke, cheerful to see him. "Can you understand me?"

Shinji nodded that he could, but it was her appearance that caught him off guard: She looked like a younger version of Misato Katsuragi if he had known her as a teenager or younger adult.

"Who…who…" He tried to speak, but his throat was dry.

Thankfully, the girl was holding a cup of water that she had brought with her, and gave it to him.

"Ah," he sighed, his throat revitalized. "Thank you. I feel much better now. Who are you?"

"Mima Katsuragi," she introduced herself. "What's your name?"

"Shinji Ikari."

"It is nice to meet you."

"Thank you. Um, where am I?"

"You're in recovery on one of our Landing Ships. It's been two days since we found you. Do you…remember anything from before, anything at all?"

"I was…in a dark place for what felt like a long time. Then I hit something and the Eva's internal battery started repowering itself. I think it was from that large creature that looked like a dinosaur, only made of rock."

"That…was Godzilla, and it was an aberration, a hyper-evolved species of mutant plant with metal fibers…that managed to grow from fifty meters to over three-hundred meters in the course of twenty-thousand years."

"Twenty… You said twenty-thousand years? Is this Earth?"

"It is, but we barely recognize it because we've been gone for so long."

"What year did you leave?"

"We left in the year Twenty-Forty-Eight…after eighteen years trying to defeat Godzilla, who was the worst monster in existence."

_Eighteen years of fighting a monster that was the worst? They left in the year Twenty-Forty-Eight? That and twenty-thousand years is a long time to have to put up with such a problem. It's far longer than my problems._

"But thanks to you, we don't have to worry about Godzilla, anymore. You got rid of it, sending into space. We owe you a huge debt."

-x-

Through all the commotion, Metphies lost his Garbetrium bead. Without it, he wouldn't be able facilitate a ritual necessary to the Exif culture. Although he still possessed the other Garbetrium device like his fellow Exif Endurph, it just wouldn't suffice.

"In the arrogance of banishing the King of Destruction from the planet, we may have lost our means to call upon our own deity," he uttered to himself in silence outside of the base camp built around the purple behemoth they now knew as the Evangelion. "The Eva, an artificial deity harnessed by its creators."

For now, all he could do was wait for the future yet to come…and for a solution that might never come to him.

-x-

It was an unexpected turn of events, but it appeared that the new ecosystem that had been created around Godzilla in mankind's absence, meant to serve and maintain it, was starting to show signs of degeneration. The trees that were discovered to contain Godzilla's DNA were showing minor signs of reversion. Several of the scientists from the Aratrum theorized that because Godzilla was no longer present, the ecosystem was regressing to its previous state before Godzilla appeared.

"…Those creatures we saw earlier haven't been seen, either," said Yuko to them; it had been a total of five months since they returned to the planet and landed the Aratrum in what used to be Tokyo. "Could they have died?"

"More than likely, they're in hiding after Godzilla was removed," suggested Martin. "After the loss of Godzilla and the rediscovery of the Mechagodzilla production facility at Mt. Fuji, the discovery of the Houtua tribe, nature does seem to be regressing back to its previous state, even if it's only by a small amount every now and then."

"And none of this would've been possible for us without Shinji's unexpected arrival and aid."

"Is Shinji still at the production facility with the Bilusaludo?" Haruo asked them.

"No, he's actually with the Houtua right now," Martin answered him. "I guess he's trying to cope with his new settings and the fact that we have a relationship with two alien races."

"Still, I wonder, what seems challenging for him right now," went Yuko, "that he's in a strange, new world…or that the life he once knew no longer applies to him here?"

They've all heard of Shinji's past story and how he ended up here and likely had no way of returning to his universe or time, and thus had to find his own way. He wasn't what many would've called a hero or even a soldier. If anything, Shinji was a reluctant hero due to the fact that he was forced into a life of war by his own father, who called upon him only because he had a use for him. Wherever he was from, this Tokyo-3 in this year Twenty-Fifteen with no means to return, it must've been a small place built to replace the original Tokyo and it successor after several devastations.

-x-

Standing in front of a fire in the dwelling of the Houtua, Shinji, having eaten with the tribe members that discovered he was the one that disposed of Godzilla, whom they referred to as the Burning Mountain, took the time to reflect upon his current predicament. He was in an alternate universe and timeline where a monster unlike any that had ever been seen before had taken over the planet for over twenty-thousand years, around three different races consisting of human survivors, the Bilusaludo, the Exif and the Houtua (though the latter race was descended from the humans that were unable to escape from Godzilla), and may have changed the fate of the human survivors by returning the planet back to them.

"_Those who oppose the Burning Mountain would be engulfed by flames and disappear,"_ the two lady members of the Houtua once told him. _"You, who were not with the Passing Crows, within the shadow of the False One, removed the Burning Mountain before any could be engulfed by its flames and made to disappear. You, who fought against a natural storm, caused it to end. Blessed and cursed, you are to have control of the False One, but a path of loneliness and pain, are you not destined to walk forever."_

He took that to mean that by disposing of Godzilla, the Houtua, who were against facing against due to survival reasons, were grateful to Shinji because he made it so that they could leave their home and explore the world freely. And then, there was the Bilusaludo, who, while friendly to Shinji, did make him feel uneasy after he discovered that they didn't need to rest after rediscovering the recreated facility that housed the preserved head of Mechagodzilla, which they had dubbed Mechagodzilla City, due to the energy provided to them by the presence of nanometal they had created to give them indefinite stamina, something they could use to overcome the Eva's energy requirements should it ever be needed again in case of the possibility that another Godzilla should appear. Of course, they didn't dare touch the Eva without his consent, so he was grateful that they didn't try to alter it while using the nanometal at their facility to help get mankind back on track to rebuilding their lost civilizations after several extensive surveys of the planet showed places they could rebuild or establish new settlements in; some of the leaders of this United Earth had decided that it was a necessity to give up on rebuilding Japan because the Houtua resided there. And last but not least the Exif, who, to a degree lesser than the Bilusaludo, made him question the possibility of aliens that practice religion because they seemed to have a greater understanding of the cosmos than humans do from having traveled across space further and longer than they have.

_Twenty-thousand years, both figuratively and literally, _he thought, referring to how the human survivors had initially spent twenty-two years in space trying to get to another planet that was light years away, only to find that it didn't meet their conditions to survive on at all, and then jumped through time to return to Earth without needing to take another twenty-two years just to try and reclaim it. _If I stumbled through a black hole and entered a temporal phenomenon where I ended up thousands of years into an unknown future, how are things going back in Tokyo-3? Were Misato and the others able to defeat the Angel? Does anyone think I'm dead? Have they moved on? Is anything going on there that is…just a regular event, nothing unusual?_

"Thinking about your past again?" He heard someone say to him, and he turned away from the fire and saw one of the people that had been in a Servum attack prior to his arrival standing beside a cave wall.

"Past and present," he told the woman that asked him. "Well, the past for the most part, wondering what could've happened to the people I knew before I disappeared."

"If you think about it too much, you could go crazy over what could've been or might've been. We're not supposed to know everything that transpires in the past, only what was recorded in history. Beyond that, it's anyone's interpretation on whatever else."

"But for me, it's hard not to be concerned about those I…had to leave behind, knowing that it's impossible to get back."

"But…even if you could get back…would that change anything for anyone?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"People from the past believed in the concept called the Butterfly Effect, that you change one thing in the past, however small, however insignificant, and you change the entire present and future on a large scale. Maybe the concept of time being immutable is true, as well; you throw a stone into a river, it causes a ripple, but the current never changes…and the ripples disappear."

"And you can't go backwards to go forward," Shinji sighed in acceptance. "Sometimes, you just have to go forward just to get back a little."

"Scrap and rebuild, you mean?"

"So I'm told. This one guy in school, a little old to be teaching for my taste, would just keep repeating the same historic aftermath, over and over, like it was all he really knew. He wouldn't talk about life before the aftermath, about life before Second Impact, the things that were also history and needed to be learned. What was your world like before Godzilla?"

"What was life like before Godzilla? All I really ever knew about it was that it was a world where monsters really did exist, not just in old myths and legends. But they were mutated versions of the regular animals we saw in animal preserves or zoos. Some were even dinosaurs that survived extinction by going into hibernation. While some of them were aggressive and dangerous, others were rather ignorant of humans and weren't trying to attack us, even though they could've. They would just pass by a town or city, trying to get somewhere to eat vegetation or fish. There used to be a saying that even if we were spending the rest of our lives fighting monsters…we would be content so long as we didn't know anything about Godzilla."

Shinji concluded that because of the creature, people's recollection of their past before its appearance had been stunted due to its repeated attempts to either hurt or dispose of them wherever they were and wherever it went. A monster…that was so dangerous that even other monsters, lesser creatures with little to no intent on harming people, would rather avoid than face. And one so dangerous that some perceived it as a sort of god while others viewed it as a demon that existed only to destroy what was, what is and what could've been.

"What was your world like?" The woman asked him. "You're from the year Twenty-Fifteen, a time where monsters didn't exist and attack you all the time, except for the ones you had to face. What was your world like?"

"I wasn't a fan for big cities, preferring small towns or the countryside where things were quiet. The city I did live in, though, Tokyo-3, wasn't all that bad when it wasn't attacked, but it was too advanced for a fortress city. Even though people lived in it, it was hard to pretend that it was just a regular place like Nagasaki or Osaka. I guess…despite living in a world where monsters never existed or attacked in the past…I never lived myself. I might've tried to live a little, but I didn't get very far. I'm probably handicapped. I want to enjoy life, but I can't."

"You're just rusty. Every last of us is rusty. This was our life up until a few months ago. We're still rebuilding, but…we're optimistic on finally settling down and living like we used to."

Shinji returned his gaze to the fire and uttered, "Yeah…being optimistic helps."

-x-

_Ten years later_

Ten years of surveying the planet, along with extensive use of nanometal to repair and rebuild ruined settlements found across the continents and islands they visited to colonize and rebuild the human race, but things were starting to look like they were returning to a semblance of normality. The remnants of the human race had resettled in the western lands upon the clearing up of Godzilla's extensive radiation with Anti-Nuclear Energy Bacteria while the Exif were building their settlement in what remained of the European lands to establish their religion while the Bilusaludo claimed what was left of Canada to continue developing tools to aid in the reconstruction efforts. It was approaching the winter season again for the tenth time, and for those that had never seen the snow before, it was a magnificent sight to see places covered in white that fell from the sky.

Shinji, who relocated to the inner parts of the western continent where the country of Illinois once resided because of the Japantown that was built there, was looking up at the falling snow as he stood in the backyard of his home; in the decade that passed, the people that returned to Earth, less than four-thousand, had managed to grow close to five-thousand, give or take because most of the couples started having children after two years when the last of the Servum were found to have died being unable to adapt to an environment stripped clean of radiation.

"You must love the snow, Shinji," he heard a woman behind him say to him as he turned to face her. "Some would prefer the summer, but you seem more into winter."

She was around his age, with dark brown hair and gray eyes, wearing a thick coat over her blue dress, and she smiled at him.

"You know how I am whenever I see the seasons change," he told her. "Nothing is still on Earth. The days and weeks go by…the time goes by…"

"Your girlfriend has something important to ask you?"

"Oh? Okay, I'm listening, Rumiko."

"You remember when you were told that there were two ships that were carrying people into space to find new worlds to call home?"

"Yeah, the Oratio and Aratrum, but only the Aratrum returned to Earth while the Oratio was considered lost because all contact between them was lost. Why do you ask?"

"Yesterday, the Bilusaludo were able to reestablish communication with the Oratio," the woman, Rumiko, revealed to him. "They had managed to get to Kepler 425, but it didn't have an atmosphere to sustain human living conditions, either. When they were told that Earth was once again safe to return to, the crew took the same route we did and are expected to be back in a year's time. Soon, Earth will home again to ten-thousand more refugees."

"That's great news, Rumiko," Shinji expressed, but then got concerned. "Uh, the Bilusaludo…didn't tell the crew aboard the Oratio about how Godzilla was defeated, did they?"

"No, no," she assured him; ever since the first year people came back, Shinji had wanted to stay out of the spotlight as some sort of celebrity, preferring the simplicity of a basic existence rather than being famous for doing the impossible, "but they found out something as they made preparations to return. They claimed to have seen a large asteroid that looked like Godzilla adrift in space, fractured and lifeless, implying that someone found a way to either dispose of it from the planet, or there was a random rock in space that resembled it at over three-hundred meters. But rest assured, Shinji, nobody's looking to interview you or get your autograph."

"Thank you, Rumiko."

"Hey, what's that indent in the ground in front of you?"

Shinji looked down at the snow angel he had made earlier after seeing a bunch of children do so at a playground.

"It's just a snow angel," he explained. "People make them in the ground by spreading their arms and legs to give it its shape."

"It's beautiful."

"Not as beautiful as you are, though."

"Thank you, Shinji."

"Hey, Rumiko?"

"Hmm?"

"When the Oratio returns, do you…want to get married afterwards? I mean, will you marry me?"

"I thought you'd never ask. Yeah, I'll marry you."

Meanwhile, in an United Earth storage facility just off the coast of what was once New York, Evangelion Unit-01, the so-called "hero of the human race" was gathering dust as it was decided to keep it locked away until such a critical time came if some other dangerous monster appeared to threaten the world that couldn't be handled with the means they already possessed. For a brief moment, its eyes flared up, but then died down, as if nothing happened. And in the silence of the facility where it was monitored in case of potential theft, it slumbered in the darkness, hoping the boy that once used it to save a world was at peace.

Fin

A/N: And with that, this chapter comes to a close. Funny, how this one was longer than the first one, but with the same outcome of Godzilla getting defeated. I think the third chapter will be the last one before this story ends.


	3. Aftermath

Creation began on 03-25-19

Creation ended on 03-26-19

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Salvation at the Hands of an Artificial God: Aftermath

A/N: No matter which chapter you read, this chapter deals with the repercussions of those left behind by the aftermath.

Tokyo-3, once a fortress city designed to intercept and repel Angel attacks, was now looking like a ghost town stranded in the future instead of a technological marvel. It had been two months after the Twelfth Angel attack that ended in disaster, and nobody wanted to talk about it.

NERV had lost a considerable portion of its reputation after exhausting the JSSDF's entire arsenal of N² bombs in what was declared a reckless attempt to force-salvage one of their Evas that had absolutely no guarantee of ever working out. Even if they had defeated the Angel, there was no guarantee that they'd be able to deal with the next one should it appear, and they'd be spending seven months replenishing their N² arsenal because of this.

"…So, you're leaving, too?" Asuka heard some students say in the classroom one day.

"Yeah," a boy explained. "My father's adamant on getting out of here. After what happened with all of those bombs being dropped onto the city, I wouldn't want to live here, anymore, either."

"What about Aida? Is he still around?"

"From what I heard, he now spends more of his time in the wilderness around the city to keep from coming here. His father says he's just getting over a cold, but I think it has more to do with his friend's disappearance."

MIA. That was how Shinji was listed in the after of the Twelfth Angel. This was due to the fact that the Eva wasn't recovered, despite Ritsuko Akagi's assurance that the Dirac Sea that made up the Angel's shadow-like body would be destabilized enough by the instability caused by the bombs and the Evas' AT-Fields. But nothing panned out. None of the operation panned out…for anyone that was involved.

-x-

Gendo's scenario was for naught now. Even if the remaining Angels showed up, it wouldn't change anything for him. Without Unit-01, he lost the only reason he had for living. Not even the Human Instrumentality Project would restore the damage inflicted upon the scenario; because Unit-01 had been lost in this unnecessary debacle, the most important piece to his goal was in the dumps, beyond any means to salvage. He couldn't blame Dr. Akagi because it was he that authorized the use of the N² bombs used against the Angel, meaning he was directly responsible for ordering the force-salvage operation that she attempted, meaning it was his fault the Eva was gone.

_I've lost everything, _he thought bitterly.

This and the following Unit-04 incident at the NERV branch in Nevada had caused the US to sever their ties with the paramilitary agency to save face from the fallout; they couldn't be involved in any more debacles following a wallowing disgrace like these. Even the fact that they had requested the rights to build Eva Units-03 and 04 was an embarrassment enough for their government that they didn't need it on their conscience.

"More people are transferring out of Tokyo-3, Ikari," went Fuyutsuki to him in his office that day. "It's no longer safe to them."

Gendo didn't respond to this.

"Was this part of your scenario to begin with?"

Still, he didn't answer him.

"If your son's alive somewhere, I just hope he's in a better place than this, and where he can live freely from the Eva if he managed to get away from it."

Fuyutsuki left his office after that, but Gendo didn't say anything. What was there left to say? No amount of words could repair the damage caused.

-x-

How does one move on after witnessing such a tragedy? How does anyone move on after losing someone they didn't have much of a relationship with? In Tokyo-3, nobody ever really knew Shinji Ikari as a person; to them, he was just another face in the crowd, nobody important or worth remembering. But those that had to see him nearly every day, they had to wonder just what happened to him when they blew the Angel up: Did he die, did he get sent to another universe, or did he wind up in a time before the human existed or after its extinction?

Whether or not the remaining Angels were to show up to carry out their goal to wipe out the human race, however, was a question that couldn't be answered just yet. If they did, NERV would have to be prepared to deal with them, and if they did continue, they'd have to do it without any expectations of a miracle. The dead didn't give miracles, and that was assuming Shinji was even dead.

Fin

A/N: I wasn't sure how to carry this chapter on from here, but this is the last one. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. And for those that read this because they wanted to see alternate solutions to the loss of specific characters like Yuko Tani, I hope this pleased your hearts out. Peace out!


End file.
